Ep. 399 Grief Rituals and Transcending the “Five Stages” with Dr. Terri Daniel

End-of-Life University

Learn how rituals can help us with grief and what the Five Stages model gets wrong about grief.

My guest this week is Dr. Terri Daniel, inter-spiritual hospice chaplain, end-of-life educator, and grief counselor. She shares some of the powerful rituals she uses for grief at funerals and workshops and we dive into the Five Stages model and why it continues to be popular in our society. Terri is also the author of four books on death, grief and the afterlife and the founder of The Conference on Death, Grief and Belief, which focuses on how religious beliefs and cultural ideologies influence one’s relationship with death and grief. Learn more at Terri’s websites:

www.danieldirect.net

www.deathgriefandbelief.com

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

This episode includes:

• Terri’s journey from caring for her son Danny at the end of his life to the work she is doing now
• Why she started The Conference on Death, Grief and Belief and how to attend
• Unique and powerful grief rituals Terri has created for people at the end of their lives and also for funerals and workshops
• How rituals help us with grief and mourning
• How the Five Stages model initially became applied to grief
• What the Five Stages model gets wrong about acceptance
• How the Five Stages model persists in our society
• What ChatGPT says about why the Five Stages model is popular
• Other models for personality and “love languages” that have attained widespread popularity in spite of having no evidence of accuracy (and why this happens)

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Register for IANDS Spring Symposium
• Get the book Conversations on Death with ChatGPT
• Learn about The Conference on Death, Grief and Belief
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